Bigger and Badder Things
by Olivia Crane
Summary: Dean Winchester is on assignment as a bonafide Knight of Hell. When he is captured in a devil's trap by a young but talented hunter, Dean has a moment to reflect upon his new life. Season 9 Spoilers. One-shot.


Ghana wasn't a place that Dean Winchester had ever expected to visit. Sure, he had traveled around plenty of places when he was a hunter, but he'd hardly ventured anywhere that the Impala couldn't take him. Until, of course, his transformation. Now he could teleport where he needed to go, and what that mode of travel lacked in style, it made it up for in efficiency.

Crowley had sent him to Ghana to retrieve a hunter of some importance, a twenty-something called Julia who had been making big inroads in the demon world. Just in the past month, the girl was rumored to have slaughtered over twenty high-ranking demons.

"You understand." Crowley had told him. "Can't let people like that walk. It's bad for my image."

"You want me to kill her?" Dean had asked, clarifying.

"Maybe. I've not decided. The girl seems talented, if nothing else. Maybe I'll _play_ with her."

So that was how Dean found himself stuck in a devil's trap in a hut in Ghana, being stared down by a tiny hunter with a Kurdish demon killing blade.

_Talented_, Crowley had said. Talented wasn't the word for the young woman who had managed to trap Dean Winchester in a devil's trap. Her exorcism had proven useless, of course, and her demon killing knife had been ineffectual, as well.

"You can't kill me." He said, bored. "So why waste both our time?"

"Whatever you say, Big Bad. I'll find a way." the young woman had replied, determinedly.

"What did you call me?" Dean asked, a bit taken aback.

"Big Bad." Julia said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Because you're…you know."

"Name's Dean, actually."

"Dean?" Julia rolled her eyes. "That's a shitty name for a demon. No flair. No panache. Dean could the name of a dentist, or a used car salesman. Not Crowley's right hand man. Not the Knight of Hell."

"My name," Dean snarled impatiently, "Is Dean."

The girl mockingly snarled back at him, her anger not doing much to mar a pretty face. Pretty, though, Dean thought to himself. Not beautiful. Her grey-blue eyes seemed too old in her round, babyish face, and her front tooth had a small chip in it. Her mousy hair hung in a stunted, chunky braid, and she wore bangs in a shaggy fringe over thin eyebrows.

"Sounds like somebody has some issues." Dean rolled his eyes, vaguely recalling a long-ago time, when he'd had a similar conversation with a demon. But that had been another life, and he'd been on the different side of the devil's trap.

"I only have issues with black-eyed bastards like you." Julia said, fire in her pale gaze.

"Fair enough." Dean shrugged. "We tend to fuck things up."

"…Demons ate my family. Actually, literally ate them." Julia told him, offhandedly. "They made me watch. I was sixteen."

"And that's why you're a hunter?"

"That's why I'm a hunter." Julia clarified, crossing scarred arms over her chest. "And I _am_ going to kill you, you know. Once I figure out how."

Dean grinned, his confidence unabated. "Sweetheart, bigger and badder things than you have tried."

"Well, they…you're a _demon_. Someone obviously killed you. And then you went and possessed some poor schlub. What did your meatsuit do before you ruined his life? Was he a doctor? A teacher? Did he have a family?" she demanded.

"He was a hunter, like you, once." Dean replied. "A very good hunter. Who worked very hard to be very good."

"Yeah, well. More's the pity, then." Julia replied, tartly. "And is he still in there somewhere? If I told him to fight you, could he hear me?"

"Oh, he can hear you." Dean said, a little quieter this time. "But he's not the same. He can't understand you. Doesn't know who he is."

"Is that how it works?" Julia seemed disturbed. "They forget who they were, before?"

"The hunter remembers _everything_ he ever did." Dean sat down, and sighed. "He just doesn't remember why he ever did any of it."

_Hope you all enjoyed this tiny story! Please leave me a review! :-)_


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